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B38
life
Guardian www.guardian.co.tt Thursday, December 12, 2013
Denis O'Hare as
Spalding in a scene
from FX's American
Horror Story: Coven.
Violent dramas on
the broadcast
networks carry
milder parental
cautions than cable
shows but can equal
them in graphic gore,
a failure of the TV
ratings system,
according to a
Parents Television
Council study
released Monday.
AP PHOTOS
A walker in Episode 16, Welcome to the Tombs, from
Season 3 of the TV series, The Walking Dead.
• Continued from Page B37
NBC, CBS, Fox and CW did not comment on
the study, which did not include any ABC shows.
Under political and social pressure in the mid-
1990s, the voluntary system was established by
the TV industry to be used with the so-called V-
chip that can block shows electronically.
Networks find it financially vital to avoid apply-
ing TV-MA ratings, Winters said, which scare off
advertisers.
To assess how the ratings are used, the PTC
said it analysed the seven shows each on cable
and broadcast TV that had the highest levels of
violence.
Each show s first four episodes of the 2012-13
season were analysed.
TV-14 warns that a programme may include
intense violence, sex or language not suitable for
children under 14, while TV-MA is intended for
shows that might have indecent language, graphic
violence or explicit sexuality, according to the
TV Parental Guidelines webpage.
The PTC study defined graphic as "especially
vivid, brutal and realistic acts of violence" that
are explicitly depicted. Among the network exam-
ples cited:
A bar fight scene on NBC s Revolution in
which a character wields a sword and a dagger
to slash open a man s chest, cut another s neck
and stab a third in the chest. The blood-spattered
character pulls his sword from the last victim s
body.
CW s Supernatural, in which a trail of blood
leads to the bodies of two priests impaled on a
cemetery s wrought-iron fence. Their eyes have
been gouged out and blood drips down their faces.
A woman is tortured in captivity, with an
implanted camera sending images of her agony
online in an episode of CBS Criminal Minds. An
FBI agent watches as a hammer is driven into the
victim s head.
Depictions of shootings, stabbings and dis-
memberment were found on cable shows including
AMC s The Walking Dead and Breaking Bad and
FX s Sons of Anarchy.
Five of the seven cable shows had TV-MA rat-
ings, with Walking Dead eventually switching
from TV-14 to MA.
Other broadcast shows in the study included
NBC s The Blacklist, Fox s Sleepy Hollow, CBS
CSI and NBC s Law & Order: Special Victims
Unit.
Although administered differently, movie ratings
have also been criticised for being soft on violence.
A study last month found the number of scenes
featuring gun violence in PG-13 movies has come
to rival or surpass the rate of such action in R-
rated projects.
The PTC s Winter said his group s study, taken
together with the movie report, "starts to weave
together a fabric that urgently needs a public
response." (AP)
Movie ratings criticised
for being soft on violence